I am from Turkey and this really concerns me. If we don't protest this in the streets and fight back I am afraid we don't have any kind of law anymore.
I'd add also a thousand bullets, a thousand tortures, a thousand rapes, and a thousand days in prison for having a different opinion and expressing it.
Turkey has a rich history of coups. But when secular parts of the armed forces tried to oust Erdogan's regime by force in 2016, he didn't just fight them off but used the event as a justification to clean house and prevent these things altogether. He's pretty much following Putin's approach at solidifying his position. So 2016 was essentially the death blow to their democracy.
Much like America is taking a hit these days, only judges seem to care or be able to do anything. I was just having a bar discussion during happy hour how America is becoming a fascist country more in line with the way Turkey and India are, rather than Russia or Venezuela (more sudden)
I doubt, but wonder if it's a generational thing, like would the twenty somethings be into strongmen when they're the majority of voters?
I used to think the younger generation were a bit different but I've seen them pretty much obsess over MAGA, Joe Rogan et al. So more of the same I guess?
Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability. The right in the US has been advertising in the direction of change so it's liked for it. Especially by young people doomscrolling about "property prices now vs before" and cartelgram/liveleakesque videos. Once you get older you get a stable job, family, etc so you're less nervous about life and have better things to do than to get your adrenaline up watching people get murdered.
Written from the perspective of someone who's started to get comfortable in life. Now I'm quite mild politically but I can go more right short term if I spend some time watching people get butchered by gangs/nutcases. Some of my friends still watch a lot of that and it definitely makes you very much like having a "capacity for violence". It's one of those things that's IMO good in moderation, since some paranoia is healthy but off the deep end it turns into "get them before they get me"esque genocidal ideas and scrolling the nazi army webm montages and gore threads on /gif/ / /b/ at 2AM.
> Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability
Old people have learned that change always means worse.
Corruption is so big that it isn't really matter who is in power, the system functions as intended. (All over the world)
The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes.
For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Whether it is silly or not, I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't seem very democratic.
IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. People can choose not to vote for him if they've bothered by him being foreign born.
FWIW, in Australia, no member of Federal Parliament (so Congress equivalent) can be a dual citizen (and they must be Australian citizens), so an equivalent to Arnie in Australia would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election. This seems like a better middle ground than "must be born in the country" to me.
> would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election
I'm really glad we all live in a world where nobody lies to gain position, or no foreign enemy has ever tried to infiltrate their operatives into key positions by becoming double agents and renouncing anything
I think Arnie is a great example, especially because he was a governor for two terms for one of the richest and most populous states, California. If he was allowed to run for president, he would be an excellent candidate.
As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people who moved to the US before a certain again (maybe 10 or 12) or have lived in the US for 20+ years. If you want to go a little further, you could require them to renounce any other foreign citizenships upon successful election.
The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years because a bunch of MPs accidentally had US citizenship by birth to Oz parents living in US or one parent was a US citizen, but they never lived in US. (US citizenship is a bit viral in that sense!) I don't remember all of the details exactly, but it did make me think more deeply about a nationality policy for MPs. I think it is a reasonable requirement.
> The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years
It has, although the case you mention isn't really my main worry.
In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
That said, I assume modern scholars would make the definition more robust than the 19th C definitions used in Australia (which was an attempt to take the best of the UK and USA models, particularly following the US with regards to being a Federation of States, while still maintaining a proper Westminster system without a "King"/Executive branch like in the USA).
> As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people [...]
Your compromise would probably work well as a compromise, but honestly, it feels a bit superfluous to have all those restrictions, when you have voters who can apply any criterion they like anyway.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
> Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Here I am again to dispel this HN myth about immigration and Japan.
Ignoring that the Japanese economy is currently weaker than the US economy (which affects your chances of getting an offer in both places as a foreigner), in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy, Japan is much easier to get (and keep) a skilled work visa compared to the US. If you are not looking for a skilled work visa, there is a long term tourist visa (6mo+6mo) that is also easy to get, but you need to have about 200K EUR in liquid assets. Again, the US doesn't have anything as low friction.
>The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
I've recently grown to value this idea of "No single person is special or necessary for the government to function." According to the Census Bureau, there are over 150,000,000 native US citizens aged 35 and older. We could have a new president every month and still have a massive number of people to choose from. The only problem would be disruptions from rapid hand offs. The pool is not the issue. Taken to the extreme, this means political assassinations are only meaningful in dissuading replacements from taking the same views and causing temporary disruptions. The lives of politicians aren't inherently worth more than any other person.
Well the American born presidential policy is just strange because it seems so un-American. You’d think the country would have had at least one range to riches president who was a refugee from some war torn country by now, it’s just such a fundamental part of the nation’s mythos.
> Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
And in a democracy that means that voters should be able to set the policies.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
We don't need to further restrict who voters can and can not vote for.
Unless you don't trust voters. But then, why have a democracy in the first place?
Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.
I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.
The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country.
When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
Though probably not: by German law Hitler could already not have been in power, because he wasn't properly a German citizen at the time. (It's all very murky.)
Hitler was already in power illegally. The law we are discussing here would have just made it 'even more illegal'.
(I'm using the weasel wording 'in power' here, because I forgot whether he needed to be a citizen to be a member of the Reichstag at all, or only to become chancellor.)
Hitler was a "foreign puppet"? This is news to me, can you tell us who the puppet master was? Because it seems to me that person should be as widely reviled as the man himself.
Having a minimum age to get some life experience is fine, and 35 I would consider a good age, however the minimum age in the USA these days seems like 70.
As for being born in the country, I'm sure with the challenge to birthright citizenship that will get changed in short order to both being born in the country and having your parents and ancestors also be citizens.
Maybe it will change to more of a hereditary system where people had records to prove their ancestry was noble.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Yes and it looks especially silly for a country which used to pride itself on being composed primarily of immigrants. In fact the current president is one of the people who was pushing conspiracy theories about a previous president not being eligible - the "birther" movement around Barack Obama. At the time that movement was small enough and the far right was distant enough from the levers of power that people could laugh it off. But it would not surprise me whatsoever if in the future the US right pulled something similar to what Turkey did here, stripping a rival candidate or a portion of the electorate of their status to strengthen their own bid.
And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, promoting it all over the world, instead of continuously attacking its legitimacy.
We have long rejected the idea that blood should dictate your social position in the tribe; but somehow we cling to the idea that it should dictate whether you belong to the tribe at all. Why? It's not with this mindset that we will reach the stars.
If it wasn't silly apartheid kid psychos like Elon or Peter Thiel could run for president. But fortunately they can't because of those silly requirements. Unfortunately that's not enough to stop psychos that can actually run, as we have all witnessed.
Although I agree on the silliness of the citizenship-at-birth rule, a maximalist approach to democracy can be very dangerous. The most unstable democracies of the past century were, often, the most democratic ones - Weimar, various French republics, etc.
The democratic paradox is real, and finding ways to minimize its worst outcomes can be legitimate.
I agree that this is a valid concern. However, we should then carefully review which restrictions actually help with stability and which restrictions are a nuisance.
It's instructive to compare the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Weimar Republic. For example, while modern Germany still uses proportional representation, you need 5% of the votes to get any seats at all. (I'm simplifying a bit.) And you can no longer have a pure 'vote of no confidence' in parliament to bring down the government, you need to simultaneously put a new one in power, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_vote_of_no_confid...
As for the US president: I think the requirement for a minimum age and for citizenship are fair enough, because these are fairly easy to verify once and for all. But I think that the requirement for citizenship at birth is, if anything, bad for stability: remember the birthers?
Now imagine that in Obama's 6th year in office, some random birther had actually found some reasonably compelling evidence (but not compelling enough to make even Obama supporters agree). Can you imagine the chaos?
If you believe in democracy and the will of the people, it seems more appropriate for voters to decide whether they want Arnold Schwarzenegger as president, instead of banning him over a technicality.
The US does have some very weird rules for its Presidents though, both written rules - the "natural born citizen" clause for example, or the minimum age (thirty five years old) and the unwritten rules - no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it, most Americans have also indicated they wouldn't elect anybody who admitted to atheism...
> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it
The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?
So they think the UK's main centre-left party has an "unwritten rule" against female leaders, when its main centre-right party very obviously doesn't (having a female leader right now, its fourth, and having just last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first election of a female leader). How do they explain that? I mean, what about the UK Labour Party's ideology leads it to having an "unwritten rule" against female leadership at its highest level, while the ideology of the UK Conservative Party leads them to embrace such leadership repeatedly?
It's a party about working men not actually a "centre-left party". Hence its decision to humiliate and probably in some cases kill people in order to "encourage work". It looks centre-left on a simplistic axis where the Protestant Work Ethic is assumed as some sort of necessary background rather than an increasingly weird religious belief.
The US does have this problem to a greater extent - don't get me wrong - but the UK doesn't really have a party which is open to the idea that maybe the objectionable thing isn't the use of the words Arbeit Macht Frei over those German camps, the problem is that they're not true.
Given that people are being arrested for the most stupid reasons in Turkey, I can understand people not wanting to put their life on the line. 10 years ago I could have seen people protesting (see Gezi park protests) but now ? Not really.
What's worse is that somehow plenty of Turk are fine with it. Inflation above 100% for long time, crappy salaries, people can't even afford rents but the leader's party still get about 30% of the votes.
This is also a lesson for fellow Americans: don't think that just because Trump won't be able to lower the price of the eggs, will make rural voters miserable and make America a worse place means that at the next election you get rid of him. Once the environment is set up properly, anything can be justified, and with the right mindset the voter will accept any bullshit. Remember, "we always have been at war with Eastasia"
Well, damn, that was my strategy to deal with Trump, waiting on the economy. I guess it’s all joever for American democracy. 250 years was a pretty good run all things considered.
I would argue that every prior president at least respected the Constitution, democratic norms, and the peaceful transfer of power. If the ruling party cares more about their goals than democracy, what hope do we have?
These things were despicable but not an attack on the system itself. This time is different. I haven’t written American democracy off yet, but I wouldn’t bet the farm.
Those were the system. The core Americanness of American democracy is white supremacy, and there's a huge number of voters who will demand repression for other Americans. Usually defining them as "not Americans" along the way, as with the attack on birthright citizenship and green card holders.
Even if democracy survives this time round, the people who enabled its demise thus far won’t go anywhere. There are so many angry, misinformed and potentially violent fringe groups with easy access to weapons, it’s truly disgusting. And they’ll feel emboldened by how easy the fabric of society seems to come apart.
I have seen the culture on HN change in the ten years I have been a member. The people who defend Trump and his policies now would never have done so 10 years ago. It goes to show that the USA we remember doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.
A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. Even getting one proposed requires 2/3 of both houses of congress. This is not going to happen.
Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote? There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
> How about ignoring the Constitution and just running anyway?
What does that even mean? He can certainly mount a campaign, and the RNC delegates could even all pick him at the convention, but elections are run by the states, and they are under no obligation to violate the constitution by allowing his name on the ballot or counting write-in votes for him.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the shittiest red states in the US would put him on anyway, but I sincerely hope it wouldn't be enough for him to win.
Even if somehow he did win a 2028 election, Congress has to certify the results, and, depending on the partisan makeup at the time of certification, that could be a non-starter.
And even if that doesn't stop him, even with the current composition of SCOTUS, I find it hard to believe they'd allow him to remain in office for a third term. Of course, courts can be ignored; then it's up to the military, and then we've truly lost.
There are so many ways pushing Trump as the 2028 candidate could blow up in their faces, I don't think even the GOP is stupid enough to allow that to happen, regardless of what Trump's base wants.
> I absolutely expect that there will formally be an election in 2028.
There isn't "an" election. There are 51 elections, run by each state and by DC. I think this is one of the few strengths of our electoral system when it comes to federal elections: making elections into a totalitarian sham means subversion on a difficult level. Blue states will never bow to that, red states don't have to (as they'll already vote red), and there's so much scrutiny on the swing states that it would be incredibly difficult to pull off.
> There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
Given how far it's shifted in two months, how far it shifts every day, and given that there are 46 more months to go, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
3/4 of all states not currently in rebellion have to approve amendments. Already states like California and New York are displaying suspicious DEI tendencies, unlike the patriotic states around the Gulf of America. What if they start rebelling against our elected leader?
> Constitutional Amendment: The U.S. Constitution can be amended by an act of Congress. Republicans must publicly get behind the third-term project.
> Running as Vice President: President Trump can run as Vice President with a space filler as President in 2028. Perhaps Donald Trump Jr. could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory. This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.
> Supreme Court Ruling: The 22nd Amendment bans anyone from serving two terms in office, but it is not completely clear if that refers to two presidential terms under any circumstances or two consecutive presidential terms. There are legal challenges in the works to clear up the ambiguity regarding the 22nd Amendment. The conservative rule-of-law justices on the Supreme Court would be able to settle this once and for all, making it clear that the 22nd Amendment would allow Trump a third term as it would only be his second consecutive term.
He wouldn't need a law. He'd just do what he wants, some judge will rule it illegal, and he'll ignore the ruling. That playbook has worked up until this point, why stop?
Elections would be held, but there's no reason to assume their outcome will be respected.
A constitutional amendment to change presidential term limits is essentially impossible to get ratified.
The states run the elections, not the federal government, so any state that actually is faithful to the constitution will not put him on the ballot in 2028 (and will not count votes where he's written in), regardless of what he tries to do. Hopefully that's more than 270 electoral votes worth of states.
I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets. And congress won’t stop him. At least 40% of the electorate will support him. Most states will put him on the ballot, threatening to remove the democratic candidate if the others don’t. He will be in charge of the FEC and the various enforcement mechanisms, as he is now. So then what?
> I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets.
That's not how it works. 22A says:
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."
Terms do not need to be consecutive to count toward the two-election limit.
There is, I believe a loophole: he can be elected vice president in 2028, and the president (whoever it may be) can resign, elevating Trump to the presidency again. Not sure if the courts would allow that, but who knows if the courts will be particularly relevant by 2028. Even if they wouldn't, they could elect a puppet president that just signs off on anything Trump wants to do.
Ultimately, though, I think all of this is kinda irrelevant. Trump is a huge problem, certainly, but the playbook for his administration this time was written by other people. JD Vance, for example, could be the one executing that playbook, and do more or less just as much damage to the country. The GOP doesn't need Trump in the future to continue to dismantle our democracy and funnel wealth more and more into the new American oligarchs. They just need to continue to dupe gullible, disaffected voters into supporting destructive politics.
That's just a dumb rule and only losers would follow it. /s
Trump's made no secret about the fact that he doesn't intend to leave office, his enablers have disdain for democracy and want a king. They very well may pull it off, as they've done whatever they liked regardless so far.
I want to be wrong about this but my hopes are tempered.
Despite everything that's happened, I'm still fairly optimistic. While it's true that Trump has been purging people loyal to the constitution, and installing toadies in their places, I still have faith that the military would refuse to support Trump if he were lawfully required to leave office, even if a good chunk of military leadership are Trump loyalists. Officers and enlisted soldiers can still refuse to follow illegal orders, and I do believe that, by and large, our military has plenty of honorable people in it who would do the right thing, and remember that they swear their loyalty to the constitution, not to the president.
And even with purges at the FBI, US Marshals Service, and Secret Service, I have to believe there are still enough people in those organizations that would not stand for Trump illegally remaining in office.
Just because someone is a Republican, it doesn't mean they'd support a lifetime dictator in office.
Of course, if it comes down to the military to ensure the proper and legal transfer of power, we're well and truly screwed.